Blue Clouds

by Patricia Rice

  Brown drew himself up in an intimidating stance that should have sent her screaming down the hall, given that he could have bench-pressed her just as easily as weights.

  “I don’t do drugs, Miss Know-It-All, and I ain’t about to hurt that kid none neither, and just you remember it.”

  Well, perhaps she had been just a little hasty in calling this one, Pippa reflected as she took a step backward. Nah, she decided a moment later in Brown’s own inimitable words as she watched him rumble down the hallway, book in hand—in a household of egotists, maniacs, and admitted alcoholics, she had to give as good as she got.

  She had learned something about survival in these past months.

  Chapter 9

  “Why don’t you just die, Seth?”

  The voice whispered sibilantly through sluggish brain cells. The steady drip-drip that had filled untold nights and days registered more clearly than the whisperer. The drip had provided his only companionship in the absence of human voices. Sweat broke out on his brow as he struggled to understand the whispers.

  “If you died, it would make life easier for all of us, Seth—for me, for your son, for your employees, for everyone. Even your mother would be happier.”

  Some word or inflection in this string of sounds connected. Urgency gripped his breathing. He struggled to recognize the voice, but pain shot like an arrow bolt through his head, driving conscious thought into hiding again.

  “I wonder what would happen if I pulled out this little needle in your arm?” the voice asked wonderingly.

  The sheer shock of that innocent tone rocketed another warning through his brain. Again, sluggish brain cells fought for coherence. The drip-drip echoed louder. A siren in the distance screamed closer. Only sound registered. Blackness wrapped the void of his consciousness.

  “Or what if I just loosened it a little? I don’t suppose you would be so obliging as to knock it free, would you? You were never obliging in your whole life. I’m not sure you even know the rest of us exist.”

  Bitterness roiled up inside of him, an ancient bitterness accompanied by a deep despair.

  “The only thing that ever interested you was your damned work. Do you see any of your books sitting at your bedside now? If I didn’t have to pretend concern in case you die, I wouldn’t be here either. If you dare live, I swear I’ll take your son away.”

  Fury sprang full blown through his entire core, parting the bitterness and despair like storm clouds flung by the wind. His son! What had they done to his son? Where was Chad? He couldn’t think, couldn’t open his eyes, couldn’t move, but he fought for consciousness. The urge to grab the whisperer by the throat surged through him.

  “I could loosen that for you,” the voice said thoughtfully. “I could tell them it bothered you and I just meant to help. Do you know what you’ve done to your son, you bastard? Do you have any idea?”

  Icy fingers gripped his arm. He could feel his arm. He stretched his fingers, then balled them into a fist as unseen hands worked the strap until it loosened. Pain shot straight through every muscle. The word “Chad!” screamed in his throat. He couldn’t persuade the sound past his tongue. The woolly haze of drugs seeped through his brain again, but the terrifying emotions wouldn’t die. He fought against the drugs and the pain.

  “You’ve turned Chad into a vegetable,” the voice continued pleasantly, relentlessly. “He’ll never walk again. Maybe never talk. It would have been better if you had killed him outright. It would have been even better if you had just killed yourself!”

  Agony! He writhed in semiconscious pain, fighting off this nightmare. If he could just scream, maybe it would go away. But he couldn’t. He had to get up, had to run to Chad’s room, check that he breathed, as he had a dozen times a night since his son was born.

  He had to touch that cherished little face with its serious expression, the dark brows all drawn down in deep baby thoughts. He would tuck the covers over the rounded posterior hunched up with knees drawn under. He’d never understood how the child could sleep like that, but Chad had since he’d learned the trick of rolling over. The doctors had said babies should sleep on their backs, and he’d turned him over countless times during the night. But Chad determinedly returned to his favorite position until Seth couldn’t bear disturbing him again.

  He would go to Chad’s room, see that he slept soundly, that his favorite teddy awaited his waking, that he didn’t get cold from the drafts in that spacious, elegantly decorated emptiness his wife called a nursery.

  “Damn you, Seth, I hate you. I despise you, do you hear me? You’ve destroyed my life, destroyed your son, destroyed everything you’ve ever touched. You deserve to die. I’m taking everything, do you understand? I’ll take everything. No judge in the world will deny me. Do everyone a favor, including yourself; give up and die.”

  The black clouds swept back again, obscuring little more than the sound of heels tap-tapping to the door. He could move his arm now. He could feel the pain of the needle piercing it. He wanted to jerk the needle out, get rid of this one irritating source of pain. Yet the pinprick in his arm scarcely compared to the agony in his heart.

  The voice lied. Surely it lied. His son slept soundly in his crib, where he belonged. He’d checked on him carefully, watched over him every minute. Nothing could happen to Chad. He wouldn’t let it.

  Despair choked a cry from him when he couldn’t move his feet out of the bed so he could look one more time. He must see Chad. His son had just taken his first baby steps... when? Yesterday...

  The piercing agony shot through him so surely, Seth woke.

  Sitting up, he wiped sweat from his dripping brow. His head pounded and his arm throbbed just as it had that night over five years ago.

  The nightmare wouldn’t go away. He couldn’t remember it now any more than any of the other times he’d woken in pain, straining at invisible bonds. But the bleakness and despair lingered for days.

  He turned and checked the infant monitor beside the bed to make certain it worked. Turning up the volume, he could hear Chad’s labored breathing. He didn’t have to go in there and bother his son. The boy was fine. He just had a cold.

  But Seth couldn’t rest easy until he made sure.

  Steadying his shaking nerves, Seth grabbed a robe and padded barefoot through the darkness in the direction of his son’s room.

  ***

  Snarling at the morning light streaming through the foyer windows as it hit his sleep-deprived eyes, Seth halted in mid- stride at the tableau in the foyer below him.

  “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” From the loft, he noted his capricious assistant in jeans and what vaguely resembled a pirate’s billowing white shirt. Through the floor-to-ceiling window, he could see Chad and Doug waiting on the drive. “I didn’t give you permission to go anywhere.”

  “You signed a parental permission form for a new doctor just the other day,” she reminded him. “I wangled an immediate appointment with one in L.A. We’ll be late if we don’t go now.”

  Stunned, Seth glanced from Pippa to his son sitting in the sunshine outside. Chad had never gone anywhere without him. Never. This beastly little elf was beyond presumptuous. He could strangle her. He needed to finish this blasted chapter, he was waiting on an important call from the printing plant in New Jersey, and now he’d have to drop everything and spend the day driving to L.A. and back.

  “I don’t have time,” he growled. “Check my schedule and make a new appointment. I can’t go today.”

  “You don’t need to go.” Impatience edged her voice. “Chad’s perfectly safe with us. I’ve turned on the voice mail, Nana will screen the calls at noon and pass any important messages to you with your lunch. I’ll type your chapter when we return this afternoon. Let it go, Wyatt.” Looking up at him, she tapped her foot with undisguised annoyance.

  He narrowed his eyes. He could throw her over his shoulder and heave her into the pool, he supposed, but she didn’t appear in the least concerned about
her fate. Damned defiant little autocrat.

  Seth gritted his teeth and tried to summon all the caustic words he knew, but he stopped short.

  Amazed, he realized he was actually relieved that he didn’t have to go. He hadn’t had an entire day to himself since Chad’s birth, and certainly not since the accident.

  “Chad hates doctors,” he called as guilt made him pause.

  “Understandably,” she agreed. “But I told him we’re going to Universal Studios afterward. He’ll get up and walk there if I don’t hurry.”

  Deflated, unable to argue with her logic, but fighting this separation from his son every step of the way, Seth shoved his hands into his pockets and glowered at the gleaming Rolls in the drive. “That car will break down before it gets halfway there.”

  “I’ll call your mother and have her send her driver,” she promised maliciously.

  “You even have her eating out of your hand,” he muttered disagreeably. “If I asked for her driver, she’d insist she had to go shopping first.”

  Pippa smiled, and this time Seth was convinced the look in her eye was malicious.

  “She has to go through me to reach you. I’ll have her sending me Godivas before the week’s out. I told you I was good.”

  Too damned good for his own good, Seth agreed silently, looking anywhere but at Pippa’s cheerful countenance. He understood women who whined and complained and flirted easier than he understood this willful leprechaun. What the hell was her agenda anyway? Everyone had one.

  But he couldn’t find hers. He’d had Dirk check to make certain she wasn’t one of Natalie’s minions, but Dirk hadn’t been able to verify that she’d flown here from Kentucky as she’d said. Natalie could possibly have hired her as a spy. He needed to be wary. Still, the personnel officer for the previous employer had waxed enthusiastic over her former employee, and he’d found no connection to Natalie anywhere.

  “I want a report before you leave the doctor’s office,” he informed her. “Call my private line.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.” Before he could halt her with further admonitions, she dashed out the door and down the steps.

  The silence of the house echoed in his ears as the car rolled away.

  For the first time in six years, he was totally alone.

  The eerie silence gave him an idea.

  Feeling sinfully free, Seth hurried down to his office and his favorite Mont Blanc pen.

  ***

  “And there was this monster tyrannosaurus! With blood dripping from its teeth. And we rode...”

  Seth tuned out his son’s excited chatter. The boy was wound so tight, Seth was amazed he didn’t spring right out of his chair.

  “Did the doctor give you anything to sedate him?” he asked wryly, directing his question toward his assistant, who was transcribing messages from his voice mail.

  “Physical exercise,” she murmured absently.

  Chad growled, emulating a dinosaur and rattling his chair in accompaniment.

  Physical exercise, right, Seth grumbled to himself. Since admiring his assistant’s competence had led to admiring the tilt of her head and the way her shiny hair bounced against her bare arm, he figured he could use a little physical exercise, too. Maybe he should take the boy out and teach him a few martial arts lessons. That ought to work well when Chad tried kicks.

  He shouldn’t be so grumpy. He’d written two chapters in the oasis of peace he’d had today. But he still resented Pippa’s experiencing Chad’s first visit to Universal. Torn by conflicting emotions, he took his resentment out on the only target available.

  “You have a call from your lawyer,” his target said from her seat at the desk. “He wants you to call him immediately.”

  His lawyer. Damn. How had he forgotten Natalie and her threats? His mind deteriorated to ashes when he reached this point of a book.

  “Have you called that gym yet, Pippa, have you?” Chad asked eagerly, interrupting Seth’s thoughts.

  “Not yet, love, give me time.” Still immersed in her note taking, Pippa didn’t even look up at the question.

  Seth shook his head in amazement at her ability to concentrate on one thing and still hear a child’s chatter. He’d be losing his freaking mind by now. He was losing his freaking mind.

  He shot Pippa a suspicious look. “What gym?”

  Chad started chattering about all the things he could do in a gym, but Seth focused his glare on Pippa. No one had mentioned a gym to him. The house had a perfectly adequate exercise room beside the pool. His son didn’t have to go to any gym filled with muscle-bound rednecks where he’d be laughed out of the room.

  Pippa set down her notepad and looked up. “With physical therapy, Chad can strengthen his arms and upper body so he can accomplish a great many things on his own. A gym with a good therapist would have sessions for kids like Chad.”

  Damn, but she had laser eyes that seared right through him as if he were made of paper. Seth instantly threw up the shield he’d wielded so well for years. “I’ll hire a therapist, then. Find the best.”

  “He needs the company of others in similar circumstances,” she replied adamantly, not dropping her gaze from his.

  Even Mac couldn’t stand up to him when he laid down the law. What the hell did it take to bring Miss Pippa Cochran into line?

  “Chad, go see what Nana has baked for you,” Seth snapped.

  “I wanna go to a gym!” Chad whined, instantly aware of the tension in the room.

  “I said—” Seth began.

  “Don’t worry, kid, I’ll take care of this,” Pippa reassured Chad, breaking eye contact with Seth to smile at the boy. “Bring me back some of the goodies.”

  Chad grinned and cheerfully wheeled away without even a semblance of a tantrum. Seth would have to figure out how she did that, but he was too preoccupied with the impending argument. No one ever argued with him.

  As Chad left, Pippa stood to confront him where he leaned against the wall, arms crossed, in one of his very best intimidating stances.

  “You can’t keep him cooped up behind stone walls all his life.” She threw the first grenade in a calm voice reeking of defiance.

  He could almost visualize the vibrations emanating from her, but the signals he was picking up had little to do with anger. “I won’t have him laughed at and picked on by ape mentalities,” he replied as frostily as he could, hoping to chill some of the heat.

  “He has to learn sometime.” Pippa knitted her fingers into fists and lowered her voice to a less belligerent tone. “I’ll arrange private sessions with only similarly challenged children at first. He has to develop social skills as well as mental ones.”

  Seth had the distinct feeling she’d pulled back her guns with reluctance, that given equality, she would have shot him down in cold blood. He toyed with the idea of egging her on, but he could see the argument deteriorating into name-calling. The social skills crack had been a direct hit. Chad had none. And neither did his father.

  “Where will you find a gym, therapist, and a class of physically challenged kids out here in the middle of nowhere?” he scoffed. Even as he asked, he discovered he was almost hoping she had an answer. Her accusations of child abuse and Natalie’s threats still scorched his conscience.

  “We could use your exercise room if you really don’t want Chad going into town.” She backed away now that she apparently thought she had the upper hand. “I already have a list of therapists in the area. And I know of at least one child in town who will benefit from training.”

  Amazed that she had advanced so far in her planning, amazed that he even listened, Seth could only stare at her. “What child?” he finally asked, for lack of any better argument.

  “A friend of mine, Mary Margaret, has a son with muscular dystrophy. He’s about a year older than Chad. Meg will know about others. She’s despaired over the lack of facilities. You’ll be doing everyone a favor.”

  “I don’t want to do everyone a favor,” he replied irritably,
aware that he sounded like a recalcitrant child. The idea of a passel of screaming youngsters and their scheming mothers invading his privacy stirred a nest of hornets he didn’t need.

  “Why? What would it hurt?” she demanded. “You have everything money can buy and you would deprive a few less fortunate children of the opportunity to improve their lives?”

  Damn, but he hadn’t meant to sound like a miser. He gave a fortune to charity every year, anonymously. He disliked attention. He simply didn’t know how to explain that to her.

  “Find a gym in town,” he finally offered, magnanimously, he thought. “I’ll pay for the equipment.”

  She wrinkled her nose, and Seth realized she had freckles across the bridge. He didn’t want to recognize any such thing.

  “All right,” she condescended. “I’ll find a gym.”

  Then she turned her back on him and switched on the computer.

  She’d turned her back on him. She had dismissed him. Worse, he had the distinct feeling that he’d just been manipulated into giving her exactly what she wanted. Obnoxious twerp.

  Beyond irritated, Seth slammed out of the office in search of Chad and Nana’s baking.

  Behind him, Pippa sighed in relief and nearly collapsed over the keyboard. Round two, score two. Now all she had to do was find a gym, a competent therapist, and a class of physically challenged kids. So, even God had taken six days.

  ***

  “Meg, don’t you go stubborn on me. It’s been like plowing a mountain with an obstinate mule around here. I don’t need you planting rocks in my field.”

  Exasperated, Pippa ran her hand through her hair and glared at the telephone. She should have gone into town and looked her friend in the face, but she was too far behind in her work already. The dratted man had scribbled forty pages in her absence today. It would take her all night to translate his chicken scratching and type it into some semblance of readability.